Utilities, such as traceroute and pathping, are available for displaying a route of a packet across a network. Successive packets are sent across the network with varying hop limits. Return messages produce a list of routers that the packets have traversed. Timestamps included in the return messages may describe delays of the packets. This information provides operators data for each hop along a path to the destination, however these utilities generally return only the internet protocol (IP) addresses of the intermediate routers.
Some devices may be configured with more sophisticated performance utilities capable of returning performance measurements in addition to the IP addresses of the intermediate routers. These sophisticated utilities are proprietary and can be utilized only to the extent that networks include routers enabled with the same software. Networks with routers from multiple vendors or with legacy routers not enabled with the same performance utilities cannot be monitored for the more sophisticated performance measurements. In addition, network address translation devices and firewalls often block the sophisticated performance utilities.